Displaying items by tag: sculpture

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. has organized several installations throughout the museum showcasing recent acquisitions alongside popular masterpieces and rarely exhibited works from its permanent collection. Divided among several intimate galleries, the installations are organized by theme, including sculpture, drawings, and portraiture.

Perpetual crowd-pleasers such as Edgar Degas’ “Dancers at the Barre,” Joan Miró’s “The Red Sun,” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” will appear next to rarely seen works, including Jean-Honore Fragonard’s drawing “Odorico Kills Corebo and Sets Out in Pursuit of Isabella” and Pablo Picasso’s bronze sculpture “Head of a Woman,” promoting the rediscovery of treasures in the museum’s holdings. Showing support for established and emerging artists alike, recent acquisitions, including contemporary works by living artists, will be exhibited on the museum’s second floor.

Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, the Phillips Collection’s director, said, “The juxtaposition of provocative new additions with iconic European masterworks demonstrates the museum’s commitment to founder Duncan Phillips’s mission to create an ‘intimate museum combined with an experiment station.’”

The Phillips Collection plans to display a selection of new acquisitions throughout the spring and summer, with a rotation of artworks in May.

Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is the latest museum to join the Google Cultural Institute, which allows visitors to virtually explore works of art from institutions and archives across the globe. The Gardner added high-resolution images of 52 works of art and allowed Google to use their street view mapping technology to create 360-degree images of each gallery’s interior. Now, in addition to viewing individual works, users can take immersive, online tours of the entire museum.

The exceptional quality of the images available via the Google Cultural Institute coupled with the website’s custom-built zoom view allow users to explore the finest details of each object. Visitors can browse works by artist, title, medium, country, time period, or collection. There are currently more than 57,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas paintings to sculpture and furniture on the Google Cultural Institute site.

Officials at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will monitor the project to see if it causes a spike in attendance. To take a virtual tour of the museum click here.

On March 29-30, over 800 works from Academy Award-Winning Director Jonathan Demme’s art collection will be sold during an auction at Material Culture in Philadelphia. For 27 years, Demme has collected self-taught art by contemporary Jamaican intuitive painters and Haitian and American outsider artists. The 1,050-lot sale spans from the 1940s through present day.

After acquiring a small painting by the Haitian painter Wilson Bigaud in 1986, Demme made the first of many trips to Haiti. The director learned Creole, befriended many local artists, and became a regular at the Centre d’Art, which showcased some of Haiti’s greatest artistic masterpieces. In 1997, Demme curated “Island on Fire,” an exhibition in Manhattan that featured over 100 Haitian paintings from his collection.

A weeklong auction preview will be held at Material Culture from March 22-29. Haitian paintings and sculpture will be displayed by region, alongside works by American self-taught artists such as Purvis Young, Minnie Evans, and Walter Ellison. Demme’s collection also includes Americana wood carvings, tramp art, weathervanes, and canes. 

Three Texas museums -- the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas -- are adding more than a combined 1,700 high-resolution works of art to the Google Art Project. The Art Project, which is part of the Google Cultural Institute, allows users to virtually explore works of art from international museums, institutions, and archives. Currently, there more than 57,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas paintings to sculpture and furniture.

The Amon Carter Museum has submitted 1,200 images to the Google Art Project, showcasing works by American artists such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler. The museum also contributed 200 photographs from its collection. The Dallas Museum of Art submitted around 500 works from its collection including “Sheaves of Wheat” by Vincent van Gogh. The Nasher Sculpture Center, which houses a collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, submitted images of works by Auguste Rodin and Mark di Suvero.

The exceptional quality of the images coupled with the Google Art Project’s custom-built zoom view, allows users to explore the finest details of  each object. Visitors can browse works by artist, title, medium, museum, country, time period, or collection. Virtual guided tours by experts are available on the site so that users can learn more about a particular work or topic.

To view works from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center, visit the Google Art Project.

Tony Fusco and Robert Four, the arts promoters and producers behind Boston’s marketing and PR agency, Fusco & Four/Ventures, LLC, are adding Boston Design Week to their roster of annual art and design shows. They are also the producers of the Boston International Fine Art Show, the Ellis Boston Antiques Show, and AD20/21, which will anchor events in the new Boston Design Week. Fusco said, “The goal of Boston Design Week is to increase public awareness and appreciation of all aspects of design and foster recognition of the vital role design and creative industries play in our lives. We want to offer the public an opportunity to explore architecture, urban design, interior design, fashion, graphic design, product and industrial design, and studio design such as furniture, decorative arts, sculpture, textiles, jewelry and more.”

The 10-day citywide design festival, which is scheduled to take place March 20-30, 2014, will include over 60 design events, exhibitions, lectures, receptions, behind-the-scenes tours, and other activities throughout greater Boston. Highlights include the American Society of Interior Designers annual awards gala on March 20 at the Mandarin Hotel; the Boston Preservation Alliance’s 2014 forum, which will take place on March 20 at the Modern Theatre in Downtown Crossing; and ongoing open houses, lectures and special sales in Park Square and on Newbury and Boylston Streets.

AD20/21: Art & Design of the 20th and 21st Centuries will take place March 27 through March 30 at the Cyclorama, Boston Center for the Arts, during Boston Design Week’s final days. Now in its seventh year, the show and sale will present modern and contemporary fine art, jewelry, vintage and contemporary studio furniture, sculpture, photography, fine prints and more.

For more information visit www.bostondesignweek.com.

Next year, the Frick Collection in New York will loan a significant group of paintings, sculptures and decorative objects to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It will be the first time that the Frick has lent such a substantial portion of its collection to a fellow institution. The Frick recently welcomed a number of masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, including Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring,’ that were presented in the exhibition ‘Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis,’ which attracted record crowds.

‘A Country House in New York: Highlights From the Frick Collection’ will present works acquired by the museum after founder Henry Clay Frick’s death in 1919. In his will, Frick stated that none of the artworks that he acquired, which make up about two-thirds of the Frick Collection, can be lent to another institution. The exhibition will include works by Jan van Eyck, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. ‘A Country House in New York’ will remain on view through May 10, 2015.

On June 27, 2014, the Mauritshuis will reopen following a two-year renovation and expansion.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas has acquired ‘Hanging Heart (Gold/Magenta)’, a nearly ten-foot wide metallic sculpture by the contemporary artist Jeff Koons. Weighing in at over 3,000 pounds, the mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture arrived via cargo flight and was transported to its spot in the museum using a specially designed trolley from Koons’ studio. Workers used a forklift to hoist the sculpture up and suspend it on a custom mount. ‘Hanging Heart’ is one of the largest works to be installed inside of the museum.

‘Hanging Heart’ is one of five unique versions created by Koons, each with a different transparent color coating. This particular iteration was the only one kept by the artist before being sold directly to Crystal Bridges in 2013. The ‘Hanging Heart’ sculptures are part of Koons’ ‘Celebration’ series, which began in 1994, and were meant to signify the various celebratory events of a lifetime.

‘Hanging Heart’ is mounted nine feet above the heads of diners in the museum’s restaurant, Eleven.

Two erotically charged works by the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard have been reunited at the Toledo Museum of Art for the first time in 25 years. ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ and ‘The See-Saw’ are the centerpieces of the exhibition ‘Love and Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard,’ which is the first show in the museum’s ENCOUNTERS series that pairs exceptional works of art in new and inventive ways.

‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ which is part of the Toledo Museum’s collection, and ‘The See-Saw,’ which is on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, were painted in Paris during the early 1750s and were most likely commissioned by Baron Baillet de Saint-Julien. The works passed through a number of private collections until they appeared on the market in 1954 and were ultimately separated. The companion paintings were reunited several times for temporary exhibitions in 1968, 1987 and 1988. In addition to the paintings, the Toledo Museum’s exhibition will include two engraved copies of the canvases, a Rococo terracotta sculpture by the French sculptor Clodion, and a small selection of French decorative arts.

Fragonard was one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th-century Rococo era of French painting and was known for his risque depictions of love and courtship. ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ and ‘The See-Saw’ epitomize the exuberance and hedonism that attracted Fragonard’s patrons.

‘Love and Play’ will be on view at the Toledo Museum through May 4, 2014.

On January 25, Sotheby’s held the auction ‘Visual Grace: Important American Folk Art from the collection of Ralph O. Esmerian’ in New York. The sale, which included over 208 lots ranging from watercolors, portraits, pottery, furniture and weathervanes to carvings, needlework, sculpture and scrimshaw, fetched $12,955,943, significantly exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $9.5 million. The sale set a new record total for any auction of American folk art. 

The top lot of the auction was a carved figure of Santa Claus by wood carver Samuel Robb, which sold for $875,000, far surpassing its pre-sale estimate of $250,000. Other important sales included Ruth Whittier Shute and Samuel Addison Shute’s portrait of Jeremiah H. Emerson, which brought $665,000; a rare carved pine pheasant hen weathervane from the late 19th century, which sold for $449,000; and ‘The Carver Limner,’ a painting depicting three members of Freeport’s Carver family, which fetched $521,000.

Esmerian, the former chairman emeritus of New York’s American Folk Art Museum, is currently serving a six-year sentence for fraud. The sale at Sotheby’s was ordered by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and generated $10.5 million for Esmerian’s creditors including Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

In honor of its 100th anniversary, the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ is currently hosting the exhibition ‘100 Works for 100 Years: A Centennial Celebration.’ The show is organized chronologically and features works from the museum’s permanent collection that reflect its rich history.

The exhibition was unveiled at the museum’s 100th Birthday Party on January 15 and includes works by Childe Hassam, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Andy Warhol. ‘100 Works for 100 Years’ will be on view through July 31.

The Montclair Art Museum is devoted to American art and Native American art forms. Its collection consists of over 12,000 works and includes paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and sculpture dating from the 18th century to the present. The museum has the only gallery in the world dedicated solely to the work of the 19th century American painter George Inness, who lived and worked in Montclair.